Kevin Smith's TUSK

AKA 'The Walrus Movie'

Kevin Smith and his distributor, A24, have just released the official poster and hashtag for his next film, Tusk.

Tusk is Smith's 11th feature and according to an early viewing, some are calling it his best yet. The 'some' being the guys at Big Shiny Robot.

The first 30 minutes of Kevin Smith's upcoming podcast inspired horror film Tusk was shown to a small public audience in Logan Utah on June 15, 2014. The lucky 100 or so at Deathray Comics for the live Smodco podcast Jay and Silent Bob Get Old got to see the first act of what very well could be the best film of Kevin Smith's career.

The film stars Michael Parks, a favorite actor in the Rodriguez/Tarantino world playing the stoic Texas Ranger Earl McGraw. Justin Long also stars, as 'the walrus'. Smith said he originally wanted Quentin Tarantino to play the part. Kinda bummed that didn't happen but Long definitely brings acting cred to the role. Here's what Big Shiny Robot said about Park's and Long's performances.

Michael Parks' is astounding. His performance left me with a cold chill down my spine. It is Parks' erudite character's punctuating dialogue that sells the dark maliciousness of his character, but the violence and deep madness of his character is told through his interactions with his victim, Justin Long.

At the beginning of the act Long's character is the closest thing to any of Smith's films prior to Red State. His character comes off as raunchy and willing to exploit any situation for a laugh. Long's character is a funny man on the Internet after all, and there is no censorship unless it's self-censorship.

Photo via JoBlo

The premise for the film was ignited during his SModcast episode #259,"The Walrus & the Carpenter", when Smith and his partner Scott Mosier discussed an article featuring a "Gumtree ad where a homeowner was offering a living situation free of charge, if the lodger agrees to dress as a walrus." The discussion went on from there and Smith asked his Twitter followers to tweet "#WalrusYes" if they wanted to see that concept turned into a film, or "#WalrusNo" if they didn't. #WalrusYes won.

The listing was written eloquently and briefly mentioned that the writer had once been lost at sea with a walrus he nicknamed Gregory as his only companion. The author writes of being heartbroken by the separation from the walrus and identifies the whiskered beast as better company than any humans he'd ever known. To this end, the author is interested in recreating the best time of his life with a would-be lodger in a realistic walrus costume standing in for the beloved Gregory. The listing got my creative juices flowing, and I began reconstructing the whole thing as an old British Hammer horror film, in which a mad scientist intends to sew some hapless lodger into counterfeit blubber, creating a chimera in an effort to answer the ultimate riddle, "Is man, indeed, a walrus at heart?!" Mosier and I took the tale in more and more ridiculous directions, cracking ourselves up. And then, in the midst of all the fun, you can hear something strange happen: As stoned as I always am, this walrus picture was starting to sound like a worthy endeavor -- or at the very least, a movie I'd like to see. I wrote the script in 20 days.

The Tusk trailer will premiere at this year's Comic Con in just two weeks. We can't wait!